In this page

Note that there are three different techniques to implement process automation with the Better Excel Exporter for Jira Server app. To be sure that the approach written here is the best for you, read the Automation article (in the Better Excel Exporter for Jira Server documentation) before this one.

Overview

The free Automation Lite for Jira app (developed by Atlassian) offers a convenient way to implement powerful automation on the Jira Server platform. See the official documentation for the details of the built-in features. In order to make it even more powerful, Midori extends the built-in features to support various types of Excel automations!

Introduction video

Get started by watching this video, to understand the big picture in a couple of minutes:

Automating Jira Excel exports with Better Excel Automation
Automating Jira Excel exports with Better Excel Automation

How does Jira Server Automation work?

In this section, you can read a short summary of automation in general, followed by a short summary of automation for Excel exports.

Automation in general

Automation is implemented by defining so-called automation rules. Automation rules can be created, updated, deleted, enabled or disabled through the dedicated Jira screen:

Automation rules are essentially combinations of triggers and actions. More complex rules can also contain conditions and branches for control flow.

The execution model of an automation rule in a nutshell: if the trigger "happens", then the action is "executed".

Some example triggers are "07:00AM every morning in weekdays", "every two hours", "when an issue is created", "when work is logged on a task" and "when a critical bug is reopened". Some example actions are "update an issue", "transition an issue", "assign an issue", and "edit the labels of an issue".

Therefore, some example rules are "create a 'weekly meeting' task at 07:00AM every Monday" or "assign a critical bug to the component lead when that is reopened".

Generally speaking, automation is a really powerful mechanism to make Jira work for you!

Automation for Excel exports

Automation Lite for Jira actions can be extended by third party apps. Better Excel Automation for Jira Server provides a set of additional actions to utilize this extension opportunity.

The actions enable to:

  1. automatically generate Excel spreadsheets (from Jira data) and send them in email
  2. automatically generate Excel spreadsheets and save them to the file system
  3. automatically generate Excel spreadsheets and attach them to Jira issues

How will you use it? (examples)

  • Send a daily refreshed Created vs. Resolved tickets timeline to your support team lead.
  • Send a status-vs-priority pivot table of all tickets created in the previous week.
  • Send a summary of open leads to your sales staff every morning.
  • Send a time-spent pivot chart by theme, sprint and individual story to support Jira-based portfolio management.
  • Save a timestamped snapshot of a saved filter's result to a backup location every day, for future audits.
  • Save a custom list of issues updated in the last one hour for an external system to import, for super-easy data integration.
  • Attach last month's worklog report to the Monthly Close task to save your accounting team from manual and error-prone efforts.

How to configure Excel automation?

If you're about to create your first Excel automation rule, see the configure automation page.

If you are already familiar with the configuration basics, see the step-by-step guides for specific automations:

  1. Send Excel spreadsheets automatically
  2. Save Excel spreadsheets automatically
  3. Attach Excel spreadsheets automatically

Questions?

Ask us any time.